The world of antique pipes is a fascinating place full of surprising materials, shapes, styles, sizes and configurations and, depending on where the pipes were produced, can be encountered in a broad range of embellishments and accents in precious and semi-precious stones, silver and gold filigree, amber, ivory, horn, bone, and tortoiseshell.

Friday, March 20, 2015

Civil War Tobacco Pipes

A Soldier Craft of Conflict*

We’re nearing the end of the American Civil War sesquicentennial
(2011-2015), a gala four-year period of celebrations, studies,
exhibitions, and special events to remember a tragedy that nearly tore
this country asunder. No doubt, the estimated 250,000 Civil War buffs
who collect everything from weapons to uniforms, from belt buckles to
buttons, and from diaries to daguerreotypes, and everything else
attributed to this war, have been thrilled with all the memorialization
and remembrance events that have occurred since 2011 across the country.

A soldier’s demand for tobacco is a notable fact of military life in every war. To him, tobacco represents comfort, convenience and consolation

One of the hundred or so collectible items from this war is the
soldier’s tobacco pipe. There is an interesting confluence between men
in uniform and tobacco, war and pipes. A soldier’s demand for tobacco is
a notable fact of military life in every war. To him, tobacco
represents comfort, convenience and consolation: The cigarette is an
icon of glamour, the cigar represents victory, and the pipe signifies
comfort and solace. As to war and pipes, the proof is three
distinctively different pipes associated with three 19th-century wars.
There was the very popular German porcelain pipe, mass-produced during
the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871), the Reservistenpfeife (regimental
pipe) a kitschy, complicated affair that exhibited all sorts of martial
symbolism. The Oom-Paul, a deep-bent briar pipe popular during the
Second Boer War (1899-1902), named after Stephanus Johannes Paulus
Kruger (Oom Paul is Afrikaans for “Uncle Paul”), the State President of
the South African Republic (Transvaal), who smoked this particular pipe
shape. English pipe factories sent Oom Pauls to British soldiers and
Colonial troops in South Africa who then carved their personal
messages—unit designations, battle dates, and other symbols — in English
or Afrikaans into the bowls. The pipe defies easy classification:
Soldiers on both sides in camps and in prisons crafted hundreds, perhaps
thousands, of personalized pipes between 1861 and 1865. The Regimental
and the Oom Paul have their own dedicated following, while our own
soldier-carved pipes have been an underappreciated and overlooked, relic
from this war. More often, what have survived are the pipe bowls,
absent their stems and mouthpieces.

Clay tobacco pipes were abundantly available during the war, but most
soldiers preferred to smoke a more durable, less fragile pipe. They
scavenged for whatever hard woods were locally accessible and easy to
carve: laurel, greenbriar root, hickory, holly, sweet brier root,
rhododendron, walnut and burl, among others and, without trade
experience or apprenticeship, using pocket penknives or hand tools
forged from iron hoops, they carved, sculpted, whittled, etched,
engraved and used . . . an unpretentious, utilitarian utensil that, like
most all Civil War artifacts, symbolizes a tragic period in American
history. As Vishvajit Pandya (In the Forest) so aptly states:
“Collecting tobacco pipes is a part of contact history and culture.”
Every old object has — more precisely, tells — a story, and every
decorated Civil War pipe that has survived tells a remarkable story,
mementos recording the soldier’s patriotism, military experiences, and
travels. They embellished their pipes with various emblems — battle
flags, cannon, swords, eagles, the names and dates of battles and their
leaders — often adding self-portraits, scrolls, floral designs, pledges,
and special inscriptions.

Col. Jacob E. Taylor pipe bowl, 1865, courtesy Cowan’s Auctions

Whether considered trench art, folk art, the arts of survival,
mementos, memorabilia, or combat clutter, what these soldiers
accomplished — American ingenuity under duress — is an amazing feat of
craftsmanship applied to a small chunk of wood that evolved into a
tobacco pipe that offered utility, pleasure, comfort and decoration. As
Marian Klamkin (Wood Carvings. North American Folk Art Sculpture)
asserted: “Southern prisoners carved their patriotic and political
sentiments in elaborate and intricate patterns on pipe bowls. . . . Many
of the Civil War pipes are tours de force that only someone faced with
endless hours of idleness would attempt. The end product was certainly
of less importance to them than the process. Carving and whittling was,
for so many, occupational therapy.”

Col. Jacob E. Taylor pipe bowl, 1865, courtesy Cowan’s Auctions

American Collectors
And from my research, only two American collectors, both recently
deceased, recognized the intrinsic beauty and the historical
significance of these utensils of smoke: Jan Walter Sorgenfrei of
Findlay, Ohio, whose small collection was auctioned in the summer of
2013 in Cincinnati, and E. Norman Flayderman, N. Flayderman & Co.,
Inc, Historic Arms & Militaria, Fort Lauderdale, one of the premier
companies in the antique firearms and militaria business. Norm’s
collection of about 150 different pipes remains with the family. The few
illustrations included in this brief article visually demonstrate a
striking fidelity and a balance in carving, a credit to the soldier’s
hand-and-eye coordination under wartime conditions.

*The only book on the history of these pipes has just been published:
Tobacco and Smoking Among The Blue and Gray. The Illustrated History of
An American Folk-Art Curiosity; The Civil War Soldier’s Tobacco Pipe,
available from Briar Books Press (www.briarbooks.com).